I am a hockey fan.
This probably is not news to you.
I’ve been one for more years than I care to admit. It is why I watch the games, why I write this
blog. When I arrived in Washington in
January 1984 from Michigan, the first order of business after getting the keys
to my apartment and getting the utilities turned on was to get hockey
tickets. The Washington Capitals became
my team.
Being a Caps fan would mean a lot of things over the years
starting back then – Patrick Division rivalries; watching “The Plumbers” become
the personality of a hard-working, lunch pail kind of team; a four-overtime gut
punch in a Stanley Cup Game 7; an overtime winner in a Game 7; the annual
disappointments of losing to the Pittsburgh Penguins; cheering on Rod Langway,
Dale Hunter, and Mike Gartner; cheering on Lou Franceschetti, Steve
Konowalchuk, and Kelly Miller. Peter
Bondra and Alex Ovechkin. Bryan Murray
and Bruce Boudreau. I’ve seen about 350
players come through Washington in the years I have been following the
Caps. For 29 years almost to the day the
Washington Capitals have been the team I rooted for above all others in DC, and
in time, in all sports.
Early last Sunday morning the NHL and its players
association came to terms – finally – on a framework for a new labor
agreement. Players are returning to NHL
rinks from Russia, Sweden, the AHL, or from wherever they are working out to
prepare for a late-starting season. Fans
will be returning to those rinks to cheer their favorites in hopes of seeing
them raise the Stanley Cup.
One fan won’t be back, though.
After 29 years, after giving the matter far more thought
than it deserved, and even though I am thrilled that the best players in the
world will once more take the ice, I realize that being one of “the world’s
greatest fans” merely means I can be taken for granted, played for a sucker,
and given no respect by those who depend on fans like me for the health of
their game.
My days as a season ticket holder are over.
I am sick of NHL ownership holding a season hostage merely
because it can. This is the third time
I’ve seen a lockout in the NHL. In 1994
the issue was small market revenue and who should pay for propping it up –
players, by tying salaries to revenue, or teams, through revenue sharing. In 2004, the argument was that the player
compensation system was broken, crippling the ability of small market teams to
compete. This year, we were right back
where we started. You did not need a map
and a flashlight to understand that the problem was not, as the Commissioner opined, that “we believe that we are paying the players more than we should
be.”
It was that the league put hockey in cities that quite
frankly cannot support it or that have turned their backs on it. This was not the players’ problem. It was the league’s problem and that of its
ownership. This lockout was on them and
on them alone. But in a callous effort
to have others – players, for the most part – pay for the sins of NHL and club
management, folks whose livelihoods depend on hockey suffered. Fans who really are the greatest fans in the
world did not suffer in the same way, perhaps, but their disappointment was
deeply felt. Perhaps that disappointment
will manifest itself this time in fans turning away from the sport, or at least
the NHL brand of it. Sad it might be,
but it will be what those who are the stewards of the game deserve.
I am tired of NHL ownership’s arrogance as expressed by
their hired mouthpiece. Gary Bettman
commenting that “we have the greatest fans in the world” is merely boilerplate
hot air, a throwaway line that speaks volumes about what the league
thinks. It drips with contempt for those
fans, suggesting that there is no level of abuse they will endure that will
push them away from the rink. Three work
stoppages under this Commissioner in 18 years?
Hah! They’ll come back.
There is the misleading tease. Before the last lockout, the Commissioner said, “with the right economic system, we can take the pressure off of ticket
prices, and I believe with the right economic system, many, if not most of our
teams, will actually lower ticket prices. I believe we owe it to our fans to
have affordable ticket prices.”
Ownership got the economic system they wanted in 2005, down
to every dotted “i” and crossed “t.” Did
ticket prices go down? According to Team
Marketing Report the average ticket price for the Washington Capitals went up
7.4 percent in 2009, 24.2 percent in 2010, and 12.3 percent in 2011. Another hefty price increase was in store for
the 2012-2013 season. This time around,
the league doesn’t even go through the pretense that ticket prices will be made
“affordable” after yet another lockout.
This time, it seems, the fans are owed nothing.
I am tired of being treated like an idiot. There are owners who will say, “our
season-ticket pricing has been moderate when compared with others around the
league…we estimate that our average ticket price will be in the middle of the
pack. More importantly to you, however, our season-ticket pricing will be in
the lower half of the league.” More
important to me? More important to me
are the double-digit percent price increases that have become normal. It is not as if I can be a cost-conscious
consumer and say, “well, maybe I’ll just buy a season ticket package for one of
those teams with lower prices.” The
market choice I have here is purchasing a Washington Capitals season ticket or
none. So stop with the silly arguments
about having lower prices than the Toronto Maple Leafs or the New York
Rangers. They aren’t relevant.
In the end, it was all so pointless. The lockout became a bubble in which the two
sides argued over what would become comparatively small sums of money, given
the revenue the game generates, without a concern in the world for those
outside the bubble who actually pay the freight – the fans – and those who
depend on hockey for their livelihoods – small businesses, vendors, arena staff,
and more. It became a death match in
which the sides, but the league far more than the players, were more willing
until the last possible moment to blow up a season than entertain the thought
or perception that they could “lose” to the other side. No one – I repeat, no one – was thinking of
“the good of the game” in this pathetic affair.
Once upon a time, I wrote a long essay about my relationship to NHLhockey and the Washington Capitals in particular. The passion for hockey is still there, but
not so much for the NHL. The National
Hockey League has cultivated a subtle idea in the minds of hockey fans. The league would like you to believe that
there is equivalence between being a “real” hockey fan and purchasing their
product to watch in person and their merchandise to wear at those games. If you’re not attending NHL games or buying
NHL team jerseys, you are some lesser specie of fan. Nothing could be further from the truth. One can be a rabid fan without ever buying a
ticket, purchasing a jersey, or contributing one thin dime to any of the
league’s affiliated enterprises.
I am a fan of hockey.
I will continue to be a fan of hockey.
But I am not a fan of the NHL as a corporate enterprise. I root for the Washington Capitals. I will continue to do so and to write in this
space about them. But I do not root for
Monumental Sports and Entertainment. Hockey fans should
acknowledge the difference between competitive hockey played on a rink and corporate
hockey played at a conference table. You
can watch games and cheer in the company of friends at a local bar (whose owner
– perhaps one hurt very much by this lockout – probably respects your patronage
much more than does the NHL); you can do so with your fellow fans at each
others' homes. Or, if you just want to
root in solitude, you can do so in a comfortable chair where the beer is colder
and the food is cheaper. You can still
be a rabid fan of the sport without lining the pockets of the league or its
clubs while being abused or insulted every half dozen years or so for the
privilege.
Fellow hockey fans, it is time to face an inconvenient truth
about your position in the world of NHL hockey.
You are a wallet with feet, a credit card number, nothing more. Neither the league nor its clubs have any
consideration for you outside of that.
Ignore that at your peril or at your profound disappointment. The next time a league official says you are
“the greatest fans on earth,” know it for what it is, a throwaway piece of
rhetoric. The next time a club owner
says he values, appreciates, or cherishes you, it is prelude to his trying to
pry more money out of your wallet. And
as for bottom lines, there is but one bottom line here, the owners’.
Because in the end, sports is a business. That is not just a turn of phrase, it is a reality. Sports has always been thus, but it has more
often than not been accompanied by at least the notion that a sports franchise
was a community enterprise, that one was a steward of that enterprise as well
as an owner. These days, that has
changed. A sports franchise is merely an
asset to be managed by people whose interest doesn’t seem to stray far from,
well, asset management. The NHL has
reduced itself in this process to an elemental expression of that fact. In that respect – and perhaps in that respect
alone – they are like one of the major professional sports.
OK, fine. It’s a
business. As a member of that business
the Washington Capitals are asking me to buy a product. It is a product that has provided a lot of
thrills over the years and its share of disappointments, too; misfortunes that
I have set aside to return to the stands because I do have a passion for
hockey. The current state of the product
the Capitals want to sell me has evidenced little improvement over the past
several years and has shown itself to be unreliable in its availability. Yet it is one for which I am being asked to
pay higher and higher…and higher prices, year after year…after year. If it was just that, though, I’d be
back. The pull of hockey has been, and
remains, that strong.
Let me repeat that…the pull of hockey has been, and remains,
that strong. After all, I had already
decided last spring to renew for this season, despite the too-frequent on-ice
disappointments with my team and even the sticker shock in ticket price
increases from year to year. But in the
midst of this lockout, I found myself realizing that I just don’t want to do
business with these people anymore.
Arrogance, unreliability, and an utter lack of sensitivity or
appreciation to those who pay the bills do not make for a trusted business
partner.
You, dear reader, might think this rant is one-sided, that
there is blame to be shared by the players and their Players Association. I am not happy with some of their tactics,
but in the end, one party was responsible for a lockout, and it has become the
default position of the league upon the expiration of collective bargaining agreements. In the assignment of blame for the state of
NHL hockey and this lockout, the scales tip heavily on the ownership side of
the scale.
I have no delusions that the rant of one unhappy hockey fan
is going to create a groundswell of opposition to what the NHL is doing. It will not register not at all in
Washington. After all, the Caps are
selling out the joint, and there is a “waiting list” for tickets. Enjoy it while it lasts. Because the Caps might be the “in” thing in
DC for now, but a lot of those fans that jumped on board when they started
winning won’t miss a beat in jumping off when they stop or when they are
overtaken by other local teams, such as the up-and-coming Nationals or a
Redskins team that has an electrifying rookie in Robert Griffin III.
In the end, I can't even be angry, just sad. Sad in the knowledge that in almost 29 years
as a fan attending games when I could, then as a partial plan holder, and then
as a season ticket holder, I was there when the Caps were the lunch-pail team
working hard and busting tail, despite the playoff disappointments. I was there when the Caps were frustrated
year after year, first by the Islanders, then by the Penguins. I was there when the Caps tried to do the
right thing and trade for a superstar in Jaromir Jagr, then when they traded
Jagr away to start to rebuild their team.
I was there going into and coming out of The Great Lockout of 2004-2005,
when the Caps tried hard but weren't very good.
I was there when the Caps couldn't draw flies. I was there when they
made themselves competitive again. I was
not alone. A lot of season ticket
holders, fierce in their loyalty, could tell a similar story here in Washington
and in a lot of other cities around the league.
But now, I find that for a few dollars, or pride, or just
being unable to stomach the very idea of "losing" to the help in a
labor dispute, the league could not return that loyalty for their legions of
season ticket holders and fans. The league
seemed intent to follow a script in which they would get around to a
settlement, secure in the knowledge that whatever the delay, fans would be
back. Well, when the NHL locked out its
players, it locked out its fans, too.
The difference between one and the other is that the players will be
back. And even though I suppose most
fans will be back, I won’t be, not as a season ticket holder. One might argue that I’m turning my back on
the NHL, but the fact is the league turned its back on me and thousands of
other fans when it decided to go down this road one more time.
I’m sick, I’m tired, and I’m done.
F.J. Corrigan
